PFAS in Maine: What the State Testing Program Has Found

Maine’s Department of Environmental Protection keeps a table of private well test results, sorted by town, 254 towns long. Three columns: wells sampled, wells below the state’s PFAS standard, wells above it. Fairfield’s row reads 502 sampled, 204 above. Benton’s reads 71 and 43. Unity, 153 and 49. Knox, 107 and 30. Albion, 146 and 27. Cutler, out on the Washington County coast, 58 and 34.

Add the printed columns yourself, as I did, and the table comes to 4,799 wells sampled with 840 above the standard, or 17.5 percent of everything tested. At least one exceedance appears in 113 of those 254 towns. Those totals are my arithmetic on DEP’s numbers, not the department’s own summary, and DEP notes the table “is not a complete data set as data is still being compiled and collected.”

A standard that adds six chemicals together

Maine’s interim drinking water standard is 20 nanograms per liter, the same thing as 20 parts per trillion. The arithmetic is what makes it unusual. That 20 applies to the sum of six PFAS compounds, alone or in combination: PFOA, PFOS, PFNA, PFHxS, PFHpA and PFDA. A well carrying all six at 4 parts per trillion apiece fails, though no single compound is near the limit. The Legislature set the standard in Resolve 2021, Chapter 82, effective June 21, 2021.

How it got into the wells

Sludge and septage have been land applied on Maine fields as a soil amendment since the late 1970s. The logic was tidy: municipal wastewater residuals carry nitrogen and phosphorus, farms need both, and spreading them on hayfields kept the material out of landfills. DEP licensed the sites.

PFAS were not part of that review. Here is the department describing its own program: “PFAS were not taken into consideration as part of the licensing process until 2019 as it was not fully understood before then that PFAS in sludge could impact public health and the environment.” Roughly forty years of spreading, and then the question finally got asked.

Maine’s agriculture department dates the initial discovery to a farm in Arundel in 2016, and a second contaminated farm in Fairfield in 2020. In August 2022, Public Law 2021, Chapter 641 took effect and made Maine, in the state’s own words, “the first in the nation to ban the land application of sludge and sludge-derived products.” That claim is narrow, and worth keeping narrow. It describes a banned practice, not a verdict on the program overall.

Then came the search. In October 2021 DEP sorted every licensed sludge site into four tiers by volume applied and distance to the nearest homes. Tier I, 60 sites, is where 10,000 cubic yards or more went down with houses within half a mile. Tier II covers 46 sites in the 5,000 to 10,000 range. Tier III runs past 400 sites, and Tier IV, where records indicate no sludge was actually applied, past 500. DEP has identified 1,066 sites.

State law put a clock on it. P.L. 2021, c. 478 required half the investigation finished by December 31, 2024 and all of it by December 31, 2025. As of November 2024, DEP reported investigations conducted or underway at 536 sites, and 182 of 184 septage sites complete. Those pages still carry 2024 dates and say nothing about whether the 2025 deadline was met. Where wells came back contaminated, DEP says it has installed and maintained treatment systems at “over 500 homes.”

Public systems, and a federal rule in motion

If your water comes from a public system, the picture looks almost nothing like the well table. Maine CDC’s Drinking Water Program publishes a compliance file, current as of June 25, 2026, listing 643 public water system IDs required to sample. Only three facility rows show a sum of six at or above 20 parts per trillion: 28 ppt at MSAD 61’s Lake Region High, 26.5 ppt at Pleasant Acres Estates, and 20 ppt at 322 Roosevelt Trail, flagged “Treatment Installed.” That three is my read of the file. The state posts no summary count.

Maine asked early: every community system, plus non-transient non-community schools and daycares, had to complete initial PFAS sampling by December 31, 2022.

The federal timeline arrived later and has since wobbled. EPA finalized its PFAS drinking water rule on April 10, 2024: 4.0 ppt each for PFOA and PFOS, 10 ppt each for PFHxS, PFNA and HFPO-DA (GenX), and a Hazard Index of 1 for mixtures, with the health-based goals for PFOA and PFOS set at zero. On May 14, 2025, EPA said it would keep the PFOA and PFOS limits while proposing two more years, to 2031, for systems that request it, and separately proposed rescinding the regulations for PFHxS, PFNA, GenX and the Hazard Index.

That is why Maine’s older number still matters. Its sum of six covers PFHpA and PFDA, which the federal rule never regulated at all, and PFHxS and PFNA, which EPA has proposed to drop. Maine has adopted the federal rule, with initial monitoring due April 26, 2027 and full compliance by April 27, 2029, and the 20 ppt interim standard holds until the federal limits take effect.

It did not stay in the water

Sludge went onto fields, so the contamination reached what grows and grazes there. Maine has set PFOS action levels for food that trace the route: 210 parts per trillion in milk, 3.4 parts per billion in beef, 4.7 ppb in chicken eggs, and a fish tissue action level of 3.5 nanograms per gram wet weight.

Wild game followed. Maine’s Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife has issued “Do Not Eat” advisories for deer and wild turkey in four areas sitting on the same contamination: parts of Unity and Unity Township, parts of Unity, Albion and Freedom, parts of Knox, Thorndike and Unity, and a Greater Fairfield area taking in parts of Skowhegan. The wording is not hedged. “Do not eat any deer or wild turkey meat or organs taken from within the Do Not Eat advisory area.”

Freshwater fish advisories carry PFAS limits now too. No more than six meals a year of any species from Lovejoy Pond in Albion. No more than one meal a month from China Lake, or from McGrath Pond and Salmon Lake in Belgrade and Oakland. Nothing at all from several streams at the former Naval Air Station in Brunswick.

Scale matters, and the state supplies it. Maine’s agriculture department notes that “Maine has over 7,000 farms, the vast majority of which are likely not impacted by PFAS.” This is a serious regional problem with a geography, not a statewide condition. For what else moves through groundwater here, our environmental health guide for Maine and New Hampshire covers the rest of the list.

What the research actually says about health

Maine CDC associates PFAS exposure with decreased response to some vaccines in children, increased cholesterol levels, decreased infant and fetal growth, increased risk of kidney and testicular cancer, and hypertension and pre-eclampsia during pregnancy. It attaches a qualifier that deserves as much weight as the list itself: “While exposure to PFAS can increase the risk of having a health effect, not everyone who has higher levels of PFAS in their blood will develop a health problem.”

ATSDR, the federal agency housed at the US CDC, uses the same construction: “epidemiological evidence suggests associations between increases in exposure to (specific) PFAS and certain health effects.” It ties compounds to particular outcomes instead of blurring them together. Increased cholesterol with PFOA, PFOS, PFNA and PFDA. Lower antibody response to some vaccines with PFOA, PFOS, PFHxS and PFDA. Changes in liver enzymes with PFOA, PFOS and PFHxS. Pregnancy-induced hypertension and preeclampsia, and small decreases in birth weight, with PFOA and PFOS. Kidney and testicular cancer with PFOA. Associations, not proven causes.

A question comes up fast in these towns. Should I get my blood tested? Maine CDC is direct about the limits. Results “cannot tell you if a current or past illness is due to PFAS exposure,” cannot predict future health problems, and will miss old exposure, because “very distant exposures (e.g. 10 years ago or more) would no longer be reflected.” A test can show whether your exposure is higher than levels typically seen in the US population. Useful, and not a diagnosis.

How a household finds out where it stands

Start with the free step. DEP publishes an interactive PFAS Investigation Map where you can look up sampling status near an address, along with a list of towns containing Tier I through Tier III sites. General questions, including about filter systems, go to pfas.dep@maine.gov.

If you want your own well analyzed, DEP publishes a homeowner sampling sheet. Expect the lab work to run “between $250 and $500, depending on the laboratory.” Ask for Method 537.1, modified with isotope dilution, covering a list of 28 PFAS, and request a Level 2 report. Because PFAS turn up in so many ordinary goods, DEP tells samplers to wash lotion off their hands, skip waterproof clothing, and wear nitrile gloves, so the sampler does not contaminate the sample. The same well is worth an arsenic test, a separate regional groundwater problem.

Reimbursement exists, and it is narrow. DEP covers homeowner testing costs only if four conditions hold: sampling that followed DEP guidance, a Maine-accredited and DEP-approved laboratory, results provided to DEP for review, and DEP verification that the PFAS source ties back to a licensed sludge or septage land application site or another remediation-type site. Even then it pays “up to a certain amount.”

If a result comes back over the standard, Maine CDC’s framing is worth reading whole. “If your water has more than 20 ng/L for the sum of these six PFAS, it does not necessarily mean you will develop health problems. It does mean that you should take action to reduce the amount of the contaminated water you are drinking or treat the water.” The agency points to filters certified to NSF/ANSI 53 (carbon) or NSF/ANSI 58 (reverse osmosis) as able to reduce PFOA, PFOS and other PFAS. Its toxicologists take questions at 866-292-3474, toll free in Maine.

Which brings it back to that plain table of 254 towns. It makes no argument. Find your town, read the three numbers, and decide whether the question belongs to your household.

Sources

• Maine DEP, Preliminary Private Drinking Water Well Results by Town: maine.gov/dep/spills/topics/pfas
• Maine DEP, Maine PFAS Screening Levels (July 2025): maine.gov/dep (PDF)
• Maine DEP, Per- and Polyfluoroalkyl Substances (PFAS): maine.gov/dep/spills/topics/pfas
• Maine DEP, Maine PFAS Investigation: maine.gov/dep/spills/topics/pfas
• Maine DEP, PFAS Investigation Map: experience.arcgis.com
• Maine DEP, PFAS Water Sampling for Homeowners: maine.gov/dep (PDF)
• Maine CDC Drinking Water Program, PFAS Sampling Results for All System Facilities Required to Test: maine.gov/dhhs/mecdc (PDF)
• Maine CDC Drinking Water Program, PFAS in Public Water Systems: maine.gov/dhhs/mecdc
• Maine CDC, PFAS and Well Water: maine.gov/dhhs/mecdc
• Maine CDC, PFAS and Health Impacts: maine.gov/dhhs/mecdc
• Maine CDC, Fish Consumption Advisories: maine.gov/dhhs/mecdc
• Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife, PFAS-Related Consumption Advisory: maine.gov/ifw
• Maine Department of Agriculture, Conservation and Forestry, PFAS Response: maine.gov/dacf
• US EPA, Per- and Polyfluoroalkyl Substances (PFAS) drinking water regulation: epa.gov/sdwa
• ATSDR (US CDC), PFAS Health Effects: atsdr.cdc.gov

This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute medical advice. Consult a qualified healthcare provider before making any health decisions.